Heka / Écate (Heka / Hecate) is a single power of Vala known by two names: to the Archontians it is Heka, the last breath left over from creation and the force of magic; seen from where things are weighed, pacted and collected, it is Écate, the lady of the Balance and of the Shackles.
| Type | Concept (power) |
| Chronicle | AV |
| Root | HKT |
| Related | Thoth, Nun, Priscus, Heqeti |
| Spanish entry | Écate — la potencia de las dos caras |
Heka
The Archontians said “Heka es el señor, Heka es la magia” (“Heka is the lord, Heka is magic”). Heka is not one goddess among others but the last breath of creation, the force that affects everyone and that certain gods handle better than others. Thoth, keeper of secrets and hidden chambers, knows it from the first things, as does Isis. Before them were the waters of the Nun and the unaging powers Kek and Kauket, serpent and frog. Archontian doctrine holds that the gods too will die, and that one day the Nun will say now comes the silence. Heka is what remains meanwhile. It is power, and has no cult, only users.
Écate
The other name was spoken first. In the Ardis Vala Mega-Dungeon, a Sortian stone head, with two octagonal platinum coins set in its eye sockets, addressed the Seekers in Mithric with words thousands of years old, and signed: “Yo, Prisco, el écate, he hablado” (“I, Priscus, the écate, have spoken”). Écate here is not a patronymic but a condition, a way of being in the world. Priscus, who founded the schism against the Theosophists and wanted the spark shared and free, held it as his only title. He also left a spell that the Priscians keep without understanding it: the Shackles of Écate (found in the same dungeon), a prison that closes on a biped and does not release it. She who opens the ways is the same who closes them.
The HKT root
The root is HKT, without vowels; only the vowels separate heka from Hecate, and the Heketi (the race of oily stones that seem to sweat, who worshiped the primordial frogs from before darkness grew old) from the lady of the Balance. A priest beyond the Midnight Gates asked about it aloud and was told: the names are alike, but we are not sure. The archive identifies them as one power with two faces, depending on the layer from which it is seen.
The Balance
Before the Balance of Écate, in the gesta of the Caldero, the transaction that produced this world was sealed: all of Vala (the gem, the ark, the 1,200,000 souls turning inside it) is what remained on the low side of the beam. The motif recurs: the feather against the heart in Thoth’s weighings; the statue of balance that appears from nowhere at the entrance to Stephania’s hall; the scribe noting that the whole Forum has “the full shape of the balance — Libra”. For twenty days the Seekers believed they were doing archaeology in a dungeon; they were walking inside the scale pan. The magic they used to open their way and the power that held them weighed were the same.
Conflicting accounts
- The answer beyond the Midnight Gates leaves the identity of the names uncertain; the archive asserts that Heka and Écate are one power.